


rag and bone body

by ssstrychnine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Anxiety, Body Dysphoria, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 02:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11304327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: adam figuring out how to make his body feel like his again





	rag and bone body

There are days when Adam looks at his hands and doesn’t know them. They are the cracked edges of bitten fingernails, the dirt that settles in the creases of fingerprints, the blue veins, the dry skin. They are pieces of living flesh and bone and skin and they don’t feel more than dead meat to him; something wrapped in cling film and sold in the supermarket, bloodless on blue styrofoam. He stares at them until his eyes blur and then a finger twitches and he thinks _oh_ , and they’re his again. His knuckles under his skin under his gaze.

Part of it is what he did to Ronan, the day they found Glendower, didn’t find Glendower. The day Gansey died. He remembers his hands and the way he could feel Ronan’s pulse, the string-plucked feel of his heart and his fear, the ways they weren’t his hands and the ways they were. It’s part of that and something more too. Something about the way he’s always felt about his body. Like it’s a thing that takes up more space than it should, uncomfortable and traitorous, telling people things about him he doesn’t want them to know. Bruises under his collar, Robert Parrish telling him they have no room for the ways he’s growing, Henrietta freckles bridging his nose, the calluses that come from working with cars.

It gets close to complicating things with Ronan. Ronan who seems to find delight in tracing the lines of his palm, Ronan who pulls him along by the wrist, Ronan who fits their hands together, fingertip to heel. Adam likes it, likes it maybe more than he’s ever liked anything, the casual way they touch, but that makes it hard too. It’s impossible to explain the way he feels detached from his body sometimes, the times when it feels unbearable to him, to feel skin move against skin. He has shared his limbs with a forest and he wants so much to share every atom of himself with Ronan, but it’s hard. So few people have touched him kindly.

He can hide most of it. He’s away from Ronan a lot, after all, at college, in dorm rooms, under cold sheets. He avoids reflective surfaces. He dreams of Ronan dying under his hands, Gansey dying under his heels, Blue raising her arms like she’s fending off a blow. He dreams of kissing Ronan, tasting every part of him. He wakes up hot and cold and scared. He counts the days until he’ll be back at the Barns and he isn’t sure if it’s in anticipation or fear. They will kiss and then what? Adam will flinch and Ronan will spook and Gansey will have to play mediator. They will kiss and Ronan will taste the metal of Adam’s skin and _then_ what?

He does go back. He makes himself into straight lines, a line of buttons, a crease between his eyebrows, the equal loops on the laces of his shoes. He puts his body in its place and hopes it does not fail him. Ronan is sunshine brown, walking toward him, looking like there he’s sewn victory into the land.

“I have trees,” he says, and that explains it.

“Is that all?” asks Adam, hands in pockets like he’s not alive and breathing for the first time in weeks.

Ronan reaches him in two strides and then they are touching. It’s not hard. Adam lets his held breath out and kisses Ronan, warm and wanting. He keeps his hands light, at waist and shoulder, at the nape of Ronan’s neck, soft as sunshine, a trembling touch. Ronan growls.

“Come inside,” he says.

It’s not hard. They curl into each other, they talk quiet and loud, they kiss quiet and loud. Ronan makes them stew and Adam laughs at him but really he has never felt so warm. He doesn’t touch Ronan’s throat, doesn’t even press his lips against his pulse or mouth words along his jaw. It’s not hard to touch him, but then it’s dark and they fall asleep together, in Ronan’s bed, the first time Adam’s let that happen. He wakes up from a dream where Ronan’s eyes are hard and cold as lightning and then hard and cold as death. He wakes up and he can feel skin, dead or living, something flesh against him, and he thinks that he will kill everyone he loves just as he’s learned he’s capable of that depth of feeling and then he gets tangled in sheets trying to escape it. Ronan is awake in an instant and his hands are at Adam’s shoulders and when Adam flinches he freezes, hard and cold.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” says Adam, but his voice comes out strange, high and choked, has he said this before? He thinks perhaps he’s crying, but he can’t tell in the dark. His hands are dead weights and he can’t touch his cheeks to tell. He curls his fingers into his palms so they are heavier still.

“Don’t be stupid,” says Ronan, but his voice sounds wrong too, caught up under his teeth. There are soft lights in the air. Adam remembers feeling him swallow, as his hands tightened at his neck, the movement under the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger. He can think of nothing else.

Ronan takes his hand and Adam thinks he tastes blood in his mouth, bitten with the effort it is taking not to bolt. Ronan presses Adam’s palm to his neck. It’s the wrong thing to do and Adam chokes and pulls away. It’s the wrong thing to do but done with so much feeling, so much good intention, that Adam feels himself swaying back to the present. He looks at his hands, palm up, pale shadows in the dark. He presses his knuckles to the high points of his cheekbones, he brushes the tears away. It’s not hard.

“I can bring monsters out of my dreams,” Ronan says. “And you’re sleeping here with me.”

This is the right thing to say. Almost. Nearly. Adam rubs at his cheeks again, presses his fingertips to the shadows under his eyes. He can feel the cracked edges of bitten fingernails, dry skin.

“It’s _hard_ ,” says Ronan. “But you told me you knew and you…you’re still here.”

Adam reaches across the space between them, finds all the pieces of his body that he can fit against Ronan’s. He’s wearing one of Ronan’s t-shirts with the arms ripped out and it smells like mud and sun. Ronan has on boxers and one sock and nothing else. They are not straight lines, not starched collars and rows of buttons and the perfect loops of shoelaces. Adam has found the places where he fits, he just needs his body to catch up. He has time. He holds Ronan’s hands, watches the shadows fall across his face, sharp, dark lines. He touches Ronan’s throat, two fingers, just like taking his pulse. Ronan sighs. Ronan does not crumble underneath his touch, would never, _could_ never. Adam sighs too, and settles back down into the bed. He waits until Ronan shuts his eyes before shutting his. He lies in the dark, he thinks about the way he’s breathing, air passed lips and teeth and tongue, throat and lungs. He thinks about his hands, touching someone else’s hands. He turns toward Ronan, and falls asleep with his fingertips at the hollow of his throat.

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this on [tumblr](http://oneangryshot.tumblr.com/) ages ago and found it again. im not sure why i didn't post it here? i like it more than i remember. thank you for reading!


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